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Bassoon Concerto in B flat major, K191 K186e

Introduction

It was long assumed that Mozart’s earliest wind concerto, and his only one for bassoon (he may have composed three or four others, now lost), was written for the bassoon-playing baron Thaddäus von Dürnitz. But, as scholars now agree, this is jumping the gun: Mozart only met Dürnitz in Munich in December 1774, whereas the Bassoon Concerto in B flat major, K191/186e, bears the date 4 June 1774. We can guess that he wrote it for one or other of the bassoonists in the Salzburg Court Orchestra, Melchior Sandmayr (who also played the oboe—wind players were expected to multi-task in those days) or Johann Heinrich Schulz. Perhaps they both played the concerto at different times. The eighteen-year-old Mozart gives full rein to the bassoon’s clownish side in the first movement’s quickfire repeated notes and vertiginous leaps, with the instrument morphing between high tenor and basso profundo. But during the eighteenth century the instrument had become mellower and more expressive. By the turn of the nineteenth Koch’s Musikalisches Lexicon dubbed the bassoon ‘Ein Instrument der Liebe’ (‘an instrument of love’). Mozart duly exploited its potential for eloquent cantabile and, especially in the slow movement, the peculiar plangency of its high tenor register.

A decade later, in his great Viennese piano concertos, Mozart liked to work with an expansive array of themes. Scored for a small orchestra of oboes, horns (which in the key of B flat lend a ringing brilliance to the tuttis) and strings, the bassoon concerto is a much more compact affair. In the first movement Mozart contents himself with just two subjects: the proudly striding, wide-ranging opening theme, perfectly fashioned for the bassoon (the wide leaps here sound dignified rather than comical), and a second theme featuring spiky violin staccatos against sustained oboes and horns. The bassoon later adorns this with its own countermelody. Then in the recapitulation the roles are reversed, with the bassoon playing the staccato tune and the violins the countermelody—a delicately witty touch.

As in Mozart’s violin concertos of 1775, the slow movement, with muted violins and violas, is a tender operatic aria reimagined in instrumental terms. The opening phrase is a favourite Mozartian gambit that will reach its apogee in the Countess’s ‘Porgi amor’ in Le nozze di Figaro. As in a heartfelt opera seria aria, the soloist’s leaps and plunges are now charged with intense expressiveness. For his finale Mozart writes a rondo in minuet tempo, a fashionable form in concertos of the 1760s and 1770s. With its frolicking triplets and semiquavers, the bassoon delights in undercutting the galant formality of the refrain. When the soloist finally gets to play the refrain, its Till Eulenspiegel irreverence seems to infect the orchestra. First and second violins dance airily around the bassoon, oboes cluck approvingly. The soloist then bows out with a cheeky flourish, leaving the final tutti to restore decorum.

Recordings

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